Opportunities in a Tangle of Timelines
by Cannibalistic Skittles
Summary: It doesn't matter the time or place, they always seem to find each other, the girl of shadows and the boy of flames. (Basically where I'm putting my É/E request fics.)
1. Apart

Prompt: Graduation fic.

* * *

He finds her on the bleachers at the edge of the football field.

Her back is to him, but he can still make out her feet dangling over the side.

He'd thrown his own cap, as per tradition - not that it particularly mattered to him, but he distinctly remembered the disheartened cries of 'killjoy!' when he thought to opt out of it - and when all settled down, he found it had disappeared. Honestly, he might have actually put some effort into looking for it, if she hadn't disappeared as well.

Now, when he settles silently down beside her, he notes that she is holding a graduation cap. Her fingers are pulling gently at the tassel, and he can just barely see his name, neatly etched on the inside.

Two mysteries solved, then.

It isn't _quite_ dark yet, but it's enough to clearly make out the stream of cars that she's fixed her eyes on, with headlights glowing in the dimness; she casts her eyes to him and offers a faint smile before looking away again.

"Enjolras. So you switched out the red for, what, more of the same?" She speaks of the switch from graduation gown to jacket. He shrugs in response; it was mostly rhetorical, anyway.

The silence that then falls between them is not comfortable, or, at least, not as it usually is.

She asked him a question earlier. From the way she acts now, it seems to be weighing as heavily on her mind as it is on his.

(What is he supposed to say? _No_, there is no way _any_ of their group of friends will leave?

That he has more important things to think of, or is _supposed_ to, but that he has thought of her more often than he should, and why would he ever just let them drift apart?)

Even when she speaks, it is difficult to pull himself from his thoughts, because what she says is "we are not going to fall apart" and this mirrors so clearly what she asked before that he must pause to consider whether this was imagined or not.

She's looking away from him again when she repeats it.

He wants to smile - to grin more, actually, which is a bit beyond him, so instead he shrugs and asks her - because sometimes the man with the silver tongue is at a loss for the words he wants to say - if she plans to keep holding _that_ forever or if she's going to give it back.

She smiles, finally turning away from the sight of the traffic, and says that, no, she will keep it - unless he's willing to trade?

She reaches over to tug at his red jacket so it is clear what she means.

It isn't particularly cold, and she is not really in the habit of doing this, but there is , something in her gaze that makes him slide off the jacket in order to offer it up - and why not? This may be the last time they see each other for quite a while, if she is right and it is not _the_ last time, as she has decided.

Éponine gives a flash of teeth, brilliant against dark skin. She plunks the hat atop his head, then leans forward to brush a curl away.

Her fingers linger too long - or _not long enough_, he thinks - before she pulls away. There is a laugh in her voice when she speaks. "You can have it back," she declares, curling the syllables around slowly as if tasting them, "when you see me again. Incentive."

He thinks, as he watches her hop down the bleachers, he did not need any incentive, but then, it's a nice excuse.


	2. Together

Prompt: "Eponine and Enjolras in the shower together (together), and then the Amis knock, and their tops are both damp and an awkward conversation ensues, but the Amis are all smirking and trying to make it more awkward."

* * *

The pair (_not-a-couple-thank-you-nothing's-official_) is not alerted by the click of the lock. No, this sound is muted, drowned out by running water.

The next noise, however - the noise of the front door banging open to admit boisterous, if slightly muffled, voices - is audible.

She's got suds in her hair and he's blinking water from his eyes when they, startled, jerk away from each other, and the first word out of Éponine's mouth is a curse.

Enjolras is the one who actually thinks to turn the water off. He reaches for a towel much less aggressively than she, but there is a frown tugging down his lips.

She, still damp, yanks on her jeans with such savage ferocity that the motion that should, by all rights be downright ridiculous is made to seem less so, and as she does so, he hears her mutter, "should never have given out copies of the key."

He knows she doesn't mean it. After all, he helped her locate the place to make the copies, and knows well the reasoning, all drawn up in a neat little list - much of this centered on the well-being of the siblings who stay often enough in the apartment's guest room that she now simply calls it the 'kids' bedroom' in the unfortunate-but-not-unlikely scenarios that her parents make their return.

Éponine Thénardier is headstrong and willful but not reckless, never reckless when it comes to them, and she is going to pore over every action that involves them until she is sure that it could cause no harm.

(Never again, she'd told him, and there was that strength that he -

- well -

_something_s her for.)

So, then, Éponine _must_ have known this was a possibility before making copies, but at the moment, he can't help but agree with the sentiment.

Combeferre knows, naturally. As does Grantaire, actually - as hard, or as unwilling, for Éponine to keep secrets from him as it is for Enjolras to keep them from Combeferre.

And this is it.

Four should know, and only four. The pair does, after all, want to give themselves time to settle into this and figure out what _this_ is.

Éponine attempts to, futilely, wring out her hair. "Forgot there was a meeting _today_, let alone _here_." She sends him a sidelong look and says, "this was your doing," and he smiles at the soft accusation.

"You agreed."

"I was… distracted. You didn't say anything about it today."

His smile turns a touch more wicked. "I was… distracted," he repeats.

"Hmmm. Yes." There is nothing bashful in the self-satisfied smile that spreads across her face, and it is only the knowledge that their friends are not only in the other room but will likely come looking for her that keeps him from beginning a repeat of their earlier actions.

When he is out of sight from the door, she joins the rest in the living room, adjusting immediately to the loud and jovial talk; he follows after minutes later, slipping in when there are less and less lulls in the conversations.

Of course, it doesn't work, and by the end of the night, everyone knows.

_They_ know that _Courfeyrac_ knows after one too many _almost_-sly comments; he confesses, quite cheerfully, that he had suspected, but never had any proof - until tonight. That Enjolras was there already when Éponine had so obviously been bathing raised suspicions, but the water seeping through his shirt gave it away entirely, he reports.

Enjolrs is honestly conflicted, torn between resignation, indignation, and amusement, until Éponine gives a bark of sharp laughter at this explanation, and this sets the tone.

Later, one of them curls their hand around the other's, fingers intertwining and resting there together. They will argue teasingly over who was the first to make such a public spectacle, in the months to come.

It is tenuous, far from the best way to make it official, and Enjolras was right - they never let him live it down.

(Although, as it turns out - he doesn't particularly mind. No, with the way the recollection makes her grin, he finds he doesn't mind at all.)


	3. Sick Day

Prompt: "Enjolras is delirious (illness, injury, whatever) and Eponine is sarcastic about it."

* * *

"This wouldn't have happened if you actually took care of yourself."

Enjolras had been running a fever for a good portion of the day when Combeferre finally gave in and called her.

The timing is horrendous; that the man began to show signs of worsening as his roommate was literally heading out the door to a convention he already has the ticket for - when Cosette, who had a hand in it, would be _extremely_ disappointed in her quiet, non-judgmental, _I understand_ way that made it worse - when it was an event Combeferre had actually been looking forward to - is almost not feasible.

Enjolras himself insisted that his friend not stay on his account, but Combeferre, still worried, made sure that _someone_ would be there until he got back.

And rightly so.

Their friends are actually often busy - student revolutionaries don't get paid well - but Courfeyrac spent half his day off watching over their glorious leader, and is about to spend the rest of it having a 'boy's night' with Gavroche while Éponine takes over.

Enjolras has, unfortunately, has only gotten worse since then, worse even than Courfeyrac's descriptions, which is why she is now standing in the doorway to his room, her hip cocked and a smirk on her lips.

He is bundled up in a nest of blankets (courtesy of Courfeyrac) and he looks not furious, not filled with righteous anger or indignation, no, but _grouchy_ as she crosses the room and places her hand against his forehead. He regards her warily as she flips from her palm to the back of her hand to note the change in temperature, and he speaks up only when she pulls away.

"I can still take care of myself, you know," and the commanding tone is slightly lessened by the bout of coughing that overtakes him immediately after.

She pushes him back to the bed with an index finger to his forehead. "No."

He glowers, but he can't seem to summon up the strength to prop himself up again, so she softens it a little - "Not today, yeah? But you'll be alright soon" - but not fully - "and maybe this will teach you to take care of yourself _before_ this happens and you'll _eat_ and _get some rest_. Maybe then you won't catch fire and burn up like this the next time you have to give a speech in the rain, pretty boy."

So she helps.

She has a lot of experience taking care of her siblings, even more now that she's got unofficial (for now) custody of them, and she knows how to do it

Mostly.

Alright, so she does throw a few sarcastic jibes in there just to rankle him, but it's frankly disconcerting to see him so worn out.

She brings him ice water and makes him soup (from a can, of course; she adds too little water at first so that it comes out lumpy, then too much in an attempt to compensates that it turned weak, and, okay, maybe she _is_ a little weirded out by this whole thing, butt least he didn't say anything about it) and, generally, just leaves him alone and kicks back, crosses her legs, and prepares for a night of uncomfortable but largely uneventful sleep.

* * *

It is only a few hours later that Éponine awakens to the sound of mumbling.

"Enjolras?" she groans. She stretching her arms behind her back until she hears the pops because sleeping propped against a dresser is not and never will be comfortable, and asks "what time is it?" in the middle of a yawn.

She figures he has been trying to wake her to ask for a pain-killer or some water until she realizes how odd that admission of weakness, even slight as it is, would be, and she scrabbles to right herself.

She makes it only partway, her knees knocking painfully against the floor - alright, so maybe stubbornly refusing to even drag a chair in here was actually a pretty terrible idea - but that works well enough.

His face is clammy and pale, and he is shivering, but worst of all are his eyes, half-lidded and unfocused.

She can hear the mumbling better now, something about blood and smoke, and she can hear the unmistakeable tremor of _fear_ there.

"Enjolras?" He gives a little start. His gaze immediately darts to her and fixes there, and she swallows hard.

Éponine doesn't have nightmares like that, no, where she is scared and trembling in the aftermath, mostly because she's gotten used to them, but she remembers.

She remembers the strange nightmares that vulnerability - this awful, awful vulnerability - creates, and she remembers these waking nightmares, where consciousness was no relief to the delusions.

(She remembers dreaming, once, of her father as a great, scaly crocodile, with a sharp, crooked grin that went on and on and on, stretching out even as he bit her head off and lingering in her mind as she woke up drenched in sweat; the faint, fever-drenched memories tumbling down into an enormous maw haunted her for weeks after, though she was then able to _mostly_ separate this dream from the reality, and young enough to think that her fear was misplaced.

Except it was twice, actually, if she's being honest. She had a repeat in her new apartment, a three hours drive away at least and so, so far from their clutches, but it didn't matter then; in her dream she was a little girl again, frightened and uncertain and not yet sure how to put on a brave face, and she was eaten alive for it. )

She knows he worries sometimes, is reminded of the time Bossuet fractured some of the bones in his foot at a protest, and remembers how angry he was at himself. Even the attempts at humor in the days to come - Joly would sometimes take one of his crutches and rub at his nose with it, pretending to be dapper - could not abate that, but fear?

She forgets sometimes that this boy of flames cannot bear everything, though he may try, and he did not grow up in her world.

She reaches to feel his forehead, to see if his temperature has gotten any worse, but he jolts back, and raises an arm weakly. His eyes remain focused on her, but he looks as though he does not recognize her.

"Enjolras," she says again, more firmly, and perches on the edge of the bed, "it's Éponine. You're hallucinating, and you are going to have to let me check your temperature."

"É…ponine?" he questions. He sounds tired and groggy, and though he allows her to place a hand on his forehead, he still flinches at her touch.

When she withdraws, she puffs out a slow breath. "Alright. You're burning up. It's been-" she has no way to tell the time, but in the small square of sky she can see, the moon is high. "-long enough. I am going to get some advil, and I will be right back, and if you just stay here-"

"Don't."

She blinks at him, startled from this recitation of plans. He has let his head fall back against the headrest, and he watches her wearily.

She regards him for a moment before responding. "I'll be quick - I'll come _right_ back - and you need to lower your fever - "

"Please." And his hand is around her wrist.

She stills, and for a moment the thudding of her heartbeat picking up is all she hears. That alone is reason enough to say _no_, to not stay, but -

"Alright, pretty boy," she says, settling more fully upon the side of the bed, and though she knows this is going to be even _more_ uncomfortable than before, she can't _quite_ make her voice sound resigned, "if you insist."

* * *

She awakens a few hours later, when the sky is still dark, but streaked with faint hints of colors so it is obvious the sun will soon be up.

Enjolras is not yet awake. A hand on his forehead reveals his temperature is not quite so high now, but she slips away and pads to the bathroom to shake out two tablets, then back to nudge him awake.

He takes the pain-killers sleepily, and is dreaming again, hopefully peacefully, within seconds.

And then she hesitates.

He has woken less and less with his nightmares, and she can _probably_ get in some actual sleep if she heads to the living room couch.

But…

Éponine maneuvers as quietly as she can to the end of the bed, resting her back against the wall, and stays there until morning.

* * *

The Amis call it miserable, after, when it takes three days to purge the sickness, and it would certainly seem that way for Éponine, who proves most effective at breaking through the haze brought on by the fever and so stays over most often -

and it's fine.

She doesn't ask him about the nightmares, just checks up on him, and does extract the promise at least _try_ to take better care of himself, and it is… comfortable.

(But she teases him relentlessly about the rest.)


	4. Chapter 4

Prompt: Kill Bill AU.

* * *

He has been out of contact with her for nearly three years when an unfamiliar number appears on his cell phone.

There is a moment before he answer, a moment where he regards it warily - being the leader of an activist group that is quickly becoming tangled up in plans that will, that must, result in violence, does have its dangers - and then the moment passes.

"Hey," she says, and he recognizes her, even clogged with static, even before she says, "it's me."

He doesn't know what to say - can't - and several painful seconds pass by where he fumbles for something to say (the man with the silver tongue brought to silence by the only woman who has ever, ever managed it) and the line is filled up by the sound of only breathing, until at last she continues.

"I need your help."

* * *

Before the three years, there was the occasional letter, and the rarer phone call, but they never pretended it was anything more - it couldn't be. It was just - too - _dangerous_.

This is why it is all the more surreal that Éponine - Éponine who does not _need_ help, Éponine who does not _admit _it if she does - is _here_, breaking both those rules.

'I'm out' is the first thing she told him, and the weight of that sentence is staggering. She was looking for a way _out_ since - well, since she was _in_. The reason, the final reason, is not hard to guess. It's obvious immediately, actually, with the way her loose shirt hangs over her stomach, and the look in her eyes is not even challenging - she will brook no arguments against her situation, will feel no shame.

This, at last, convinces him that it is her, the Éponine he used to know before the distances.

He speaks softly, arms crossed and not _quite_ close, not to an outsider, but closer than she would allow nearly anything else. That may have hand in it as well, when he asks, "what do you need me to do?"

* * *

It's a good cover.

Éponine is not in the habit of cradling her pregnant stomach or to cooing over the life growing there, but she does, sometimes, when drawing herself up, rest a hand there, as if to draw strength.

She does it when he asks her why she doesn't just assume another name, and she shakes her head as well. "Not enough," she says, "not enough."

She has changed since he saw her last, and not for the better. She laughs and Courfeyrac's jokes, but as if she has has not done so in far too long; her grin is too-wide and ill-fitting; her eyes dart, at times, as if surveying; and sometimes she gets this _look_ on her face, cast with shadows. She wears it still, now, but…

As she continues, saying, "and, _besides_," her knuckles press against her mouth in that familiar way of hiding a smile. "Didn't we talk about this, once?"

Once. Once, before her father made it clear that she was to continue with the family business, once, before separating was deemed safer, a _necessity_, once, when everything was easier.

But this baby, this baby she refuses to call 'he' or 'she' just yet - "I don't have a mother's intuition and I never will" - will _absolutely_ not, will _never_ be called Thénardier, and will _never_ know what that means.

So it's a good cover.

* * *

Until the wedding rehearsal.

For a long time, he will not talk about it.

Then, after, all he will be able to say about it is that if there is any 'at least' to it, it is 'at least it was only a rehearsal; at least there were only a handful of people instead of dear friends; at least they got one over on the Patron-Minette and had no casualties; at least they found her breathing, at least there is a chance, a chance.

But not for a while.

* * *

She supposes, according to them, she played it wrong.

She should have pretended all was well, let them give their 'blessing' as they watched the rehearsal instead of making an excuse about morning sickness and leading him out by the arm, promising to be back in 'just a minute.'

And Enjolras had known something was wrong because the nausea had stopped a month and a half before and she was left awash in aching because there was _no way_ this could end well, not at all, no matter how much she wanted it to - and _oh_ how she wanted it, wanted a happier end than what would await her the moment she walked back through those doors.

So she lied. Said she'd forgotten something at home, something important. Asked him to get it for her, and made up reasons until he acquiesced.

Éponine stood there until she could no longer see his car, and then she - typed. She typed out her apology, her explanation, grateful that he remembered all the big things of planning his protests, but continually forgot his phone at home.

She typed out all she wanted to say, yes, they were dangerous, no, his suspicions were _not_ misplaced, but if she left with him, they would be found, and that is _worse_.

And then she went back in there and told them he was gone, he wasn't coming back, and they could not _have_ their revenge exactly as they had wished.

She got a bullet in her skull for her troubles.

* * *

He waits.

Can't stay in the same place, though, on the off-chance that they _do_ look for him.

But he stays close. Throughout all the planning, as the protests gain and lose attention, he stays close.

* * *

She survives on instinct, and it is _exactly_ what she feared for herself.

It's later, much later, and she can't even find a scrap of joy in being alive because her stomach is stitched over and _empty_, because he isn't in that house, not anymore, and all she can think is _they did it_.

They took what she cared about, harmed not only _her_ but her _reasons_. She could have been _better_, and she _can't_ now.

Éponine goes on because she has a purpose, and that purpose is to pay them back for _every_ wrong they have ever done, but near the end, she is burning, burning out.

She does it because she _has_ to do it, because there is still someone else to pay back, but what does she have after?

Until she reaches that _after _and realizes - through Montparnasse's almost-casual words about never having gotten that 'fake fiancee' of hers as she brushes dark locks from _her daughter's_ face - that she realizes that she was wrong, that maybe, maybe, maybe, she _has an after_.

* * *

Years and years and years it takes before he hears from her again.

There's no text, no phone call, no warning. Well… not from her anyway. There _is_ one call from the hospital, but when weeks pass with no sign of her, he begins to think the Patron-Minette is simply… tying up loose ends, no matter how much of an unwelcome thought it is.

So when he _hopes _as he catches a glimpse of dark curls, as he opens the door, it is with that same, worn-out hope he has held for years, that has surfaced when he sees what could be a familiar feature.

But.

There, now, there are _two_.

A sleepy child with chocolate stains on her shirt and the corners of her mouth who looks old enough to walk and yet is held protectively in the arms of the woman, of -

"Hey," she says, and even as her voice cracks in the middle, she is smiling, "it's me."


End file.
